. . . Picture to yourself my cholera boredom, my cholera solitude and forced literary idleness and write me more and oftener. I share your squeamish feeling toward the French. The Germans are very much above them, though for some reason we consider them stolid. And I care for Franco-Russian under- standings as much as I do for Tatishchev. There is something low and suggestive in these understandings . . . .
We have raised some very delicious potatoes and wonderful cabbage. How can you get along without cabbage soup? I don't envy you your sea, or your freedom or the good mood you en- joy abroad. There is nothing like the Russian summcr. And I may add incidentally, I don't particularly care about going abroad. After Singapore, Ceylon and our Amur, I daresay Italy and even Mt. Vesuvius don't seem enticing. "\Vhen I was in India and China, I did not see any great difference between the rest of Europe and Russia.
My neighbor, Count Orlov-Davidov, the owner of the cele- brated estate Consolation, who ran away from the cholera, is now living in Biarritz; he gave his doctor only five hundred rubles for the cholera campaign. 'Vhen I went to visit his sister, the countess, who lives in my section, to talk about building a barracks for her workingmen, she treated me as if I had come to ask her to take me on as a hired hand. She just made me sick, and I lied to her that I was a man of means. I told a similar lie to the hcad of the monastery, who refused to give me any spacc for patients, of whom there will probably be quite a few. In answer to my question as to what he would do with those that fell ill in his hostel he replied that they were substan- tial people who would pay all charges themselves. Do you get it? I flared up and said I didn't need a fee, as I was rich, and all I wanted was for the monastery to be safe. Sometimes you get into the most stupid and insulting situations. . . . Before Count Orlov-Davidov's departure, I had an interview with his wife. Complete with enormous diamonds in her ears, a bustle and an inability to comport herself properly. A millionairess. With such personages you experience a stupid schoolboy reaction, when you feel like saying something vulgar for no good reason.
I often have visits, and long ones, from the local priest, a fine young fellow, a widower with illegitimate children. Write, or there will be trouble.
Yours,
A. Chekhov
To ALEXEI SUVORIN
November 25, 1892, Melikhovo You are not hard to understand and you abuse yourself need- lessly for expressing yourself vaguely. You are a hard drinker and I treated you to sweet lemonade; after downing it wryly, you remark with entire justice that it hasn't an alcoholic kick. That is just what our works haven't got—the kick that would make us drunk and hold us in their grasp, and this you set forth clearly. And why not? Leaving me and my "Ward No. 6" out of it, let's talk in general terms, which are more interesting. Let's talk of general causes, if it won't bore you, and let's em- brace the whole age. Tell me in all conscience, what writers of my own generation, i.e., people from thirty to forty-five, have given the world even one drop of alcohol? Aren't Korolenko, Nadson, and all today's playwrights lemonade? Have Repin's or Shishkin's paintings really turned your head? All this work is just amiable and talented, and though you are delighted, you still can't forget you'd like a smoke. Science and technical knowledge are now experiencing great days, but for our brother- hood the times are dull, stale and frivolous, we ourselves are stale and dreary. . . . The causes for it are not to be found in our stupidity or lack of gifts and not in our insolence, as Burenin holds, but in a disease which in an artist is worse than syphilis or sexual impotence. Our illness is a lack of "some- thing," that is the rights of the case, and it means that when you lift the hem of our Muse's gown you will behold an empty void. Bear in mind that writers who are considered immortal or just plain good and who intoxicate us have one very important trait in common: they are going somewhere and call you with them; you sense, not with your mind but with all your being, that they have an aim, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, who had a reason for appearing and alarming the imagination. Looking at some of them in terms of their calibre you will see that they have immediate aims—the abolition of serfdom, the liberation of their country, political matters, beauty, or just vodka, like Denis Davidov; others have remote aims—God, life beyond the grave, the happiness of mankind and so on. The best of them are realistic and paint life as it is, but because every line is saturated with juice, with the sense of life, you feel, in addition to life as it is, life as it should be, and you are entranced. Now what about us? Yes, us! \Ve paint life such as it is—that's all, there isn't any more. . . . Beat us up, if you like, but that's as far as we'll go. \Ve have neither immediate nor distant aims, and you can rattlc around in our souls. \Ve have no politics, we don't believe in rcvolution, we don't believe in God, we aren't afraid of ghosts, and personally I don't even fear death or blindness. He who doesn't desire anything, doesn't hope for anything and isn't afraid of anything cannot be an artist. It doesn't matter whether we call it a discase or not, the name doesn't matter, but we do have to admit that our situation is worse than a gover- nor's. I don't know how it will be with us ten or twenty years hence, perhaps circumstances may change by then, but for the time bcing it would be rash to expect anything really good from us, regardlcss of whether or not we are gifted. We write mechanically, in submission to the old established order where- by some people are in government service, others in business and still others write. . . . You and Grigorovich hold that I am intelligent. Yes, I am intelligent in that at least I don't conceal my illness from myself, don't lie to myself and don't cover my own emptiness with other people's intellectual rags, like the ideas of the sixties and so on. I won't throw myself down a flight of stairs, like Garshin, but neither will I attempt to flatter myself with hopes of a better future. I am not to blame for my disease, and it is not for me to cure myself, as I have to assume this illness has good aims which are obscure to us and not inflicted without good reason. . . . "It wasn't just the weather that brought them together. . . ."
Well, sir, now as to the intellect. Grigorovich believes the mind can triumph over talent. Byron was as brilliant as a hun- dred devils, but it was his talent that made him immortal. If you tell me that X spoke nonsense because his intellect tri- umphed over his talent, or vice versa, I will reply that X had neither intellect nor talent. . . .
. . . The Heavens guard you!
Yours,
A. Chekhov
To LYDIA MIZINOVA
November 1892, Melikhovo
Trofim!1
You son of a bitch, if you don't stop showering attentions on Lika, I will drill a corkscrew into you, you cheap riffraff, in the place that rhymes with brass. You—you piece of filth! Don't tell me you don't know that Lika belongs to me and that we already have two children! You pig's tail! You toadstool! Go out into the barnyard and wash yourself in the mud puddle,
1 Trofim was an imaginary lover of Lydia Mizinova.
you'll be cleaner than you are now, you son of a bitch. Feed your mothcr and respect her, but leave the girls alone. You rat!!!
Lika's Lover
To ALEXEI SUVORIN
February 24, i8gMelikhovo . . . Heavens! What a magnificent thing "Fathers and Sons" is! It is beyond words. Bazarov's illncss is donc so powerfully that I could feel myself gctting weak and experiencing a sen- sation as though I had caught his infection. And 13azarov's death? And thc old folks? And Kukshina? The devil knows how he did it. It is simply a work of genius. I do not likc anything about "On the Eve" except Elena's father and the conclusion. This finale is tragic. "The Dog" is vcry good and the language hc uses is striking. Please read it, if you have forgotten it. "Asya" is nice, "The Lull Bcfore the Storm" is a hotchpotch which lcavcs one dissatisficd. "Smoke" I don't likc at all. "A Ncst of Gentlefolk" is weaker than "Fathcrs and Sons," but its finale is also in the nature of a miracle. Exccpt for the old lady in Bazarov, i.e., Eugene's mothcr, and mothers gcnerally, par- ticularly ladies in good society, who by the way are all alike (Lisa's mother, Elcna's mother), as well as Lavretski's mother, a formcr scrf woman, and also thc plain country types, all of Turgcnev's women and young girls are insufferable in their artificiality and, if you will excuse it, their falsencss. Lisa, Elena —these are not Russian girls, but a species of female pythons, crystal-ball gazcrs, crammed with high-flown notions out of harmony with their place in socicty. Irina in "Smokc," Odint- sova in "Fathers and Sons," give thc general impression of being lioncsscs; they arc caustic, insatiable, appctizing wcnches all looking for somcthing or other—and thcy are all trash. When you recall Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, all these Turgenev ladies with their enticing shoulders aren't worth a hoot. His negative